


30 Days: Lyna Mahariel

by Ossobuco



Category: Dragon Age
Genre: Alternate Universe - Siblings, Dalish Origin, Gen, Siblings, Vignette
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-08-06
Updated: 2012-08-06
Packaged: 2017-11-11 13:19:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,209
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/478965
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ossobuco/pseuds/Ossobuco
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A compilation of drabbles and vignettes for thirty prompts, exploring the experiences of a Dalish Grey Warden.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Beginning.

**Author's Note:**

> Arelan is [SakuraTsukikage](http://archiveofourown.org/users/SakuraTsukikage)'s Mahariel; this piece takes place in a continuity in which they are siblings and become Wardens together.

Lyna had imagined, in the months before the funeral, what it would be like to have a baby brother or sister. It excited her; of course, the whole clan shared in the joy of every new birth, but this time, no one felt it more than she. She would love it, she was certain. She could hardly wait for it to be born. She would teach it everything she knew, bring it hunting with Tamlen and Radha when they were all old enough, and they would grow up with jokes and secrets that no one else understood—they would learn together what it meant to be Dalish, to be _elvhen_ , and they would make their parents proud.

“It won't be long, _da'len_ ,” her mother had said only a few weeks earlier, after Lyna had asked yet again when the baby would be born. “He wants to come out. He kept me awake all last night, the little fox.”

She remembered her mother's laugh, mild and clean and high in her throat, like a cool stream running against rocky banks. How unfair it was, she thought, how _wrong_ it was, that the promise of such happiness had yielded something so awful—and how it burned to think of the shemlen who had done this, how she wished she were grown-up and strong enough to hunt them down like beasts and make them pay.

How childish her giddy anticipation seemed, now. 

She pulled the fur blankets around her and little Arelan—her mother, with her last breaths, had named him Arelan—who slept fitfully, struggling in her arms, his plump fingers grasping at her tunic. A beam of moonlight fell across the floor, making the wood grain shimmer like water, bending upwards over the stack of pelts, illuminating Arelan's copper-red hair until it seemed to glow in the darkness like a flame. It was lighter than hers, less rosy—the same color as her mother's.

A breath of air came in through the slatted windows of the aravel, smelling of pines and moss fresh from the rain. She needed sleep, but her eyes would not close, and she knew it was only a few hours until sunrise.


	2. Accusation.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A compilation of drabbles and vignettes for thirty prompts, exploring the experiences of a Dalish Grey Warden.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Arelan is [SakuraTsukikage](http://archiveofourown.org/users/SakuraTsukikage)'s Mahariel; this piece takes place in a continuity in which they are siblings and become Wardens together.

_Tamlen's dead_ , Lyna realized, the thought as sharp and sudden as a needleprick.

She hadn't been able to believe it before; there had been no body. She and Arelan had survived, and they had only the word of a shemlen that his would not be found. Why this Grey Warden was so certain, she didn't know, and whatever he knew, he told only the Keeper. As much as this frustrated her, as much as she did not trust him, she could not defy the Keeper's orders, and that evening the clan had sung the eulogy for their brother. They could not plant a tree for him with no body, and for that, Lyna was strangely thankful; the rite seemed too final, too certain a condemnation. During the procession, when she should have closed her eyes in prayer, she—with a cold, panicked knot in her stomach, as if she might see Tamlen come staggering through the treeline at any moment—had looked instead to Arelan, and found him looking back at her, his eyes stark and shining. She had seen the question in them. Her brows furrowed slightly, she'd put her arm around him and pulled him securely to her side. She had no other way to answer.

Now, in the deep windless night, she listened to Arelan's soft breathing from the other end of the aravel; tense, she thought, even in sleep, and quick with dreams. She didn't know why she should accept Tamlen's death now, of all times. Perhaps it was the knowledge that she and Arelan would not die, that these Grey Wardens would heal them and that Tamlen's fate was not theirs. Perhaps it had been the funeral; perhaps the guilt in her brother's eyes.

She turned over in bed, pulling the furs over her face even though the air was stifling, as thick and warm as a breath.

 _I should have known better_ , she caught herself thinking. _I should have pulled him away from the mirror._

Foolish. None of them could have known. The mirror's gravity had drawn them in, all of them, and however she might wish that things were different, they could not be. There was no point in laying blame. It was done. Tamlen was dead, the mirror broken, the course of their lives diverted. 

She put it behind her. They would have enough to worry about in the days to come.


	3. Restless.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A compilation of drabbles and vignettes for thirty prompts, exploring the experiences of a Dalish Grey Warden.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Arelan is [SakuraTsukikage](http://archiveofourown.org/users/SakuraTsukikage)'s Mahariel; this piece takes place in a continuity in which they are siblings and become Wardens together.

Dry red leaves hang still on their branches, tight and tense as if in eagerness for the release of winter. Lyna paces the battlements, shield on her back, sword at her hip, bow in hand; there is no cause for alarm, but nonetheless her blood is racing and her feet burn even on the cold stones. She has watched over Vigil's Keep from these heights for years, now, through storms and sieges and long, aching nights so dark that even her eyes cannot see, but somehow none of it is as bad as this—nothing is as unbearable as these dry days when the sun itself seems frozen in the sky and the rhythms of the earth have all but halted.

The less the world around her moves, the more she feels the need to. Something pulls on her like an invisible cord. 

Today, the cord pulls her to the north. She crosses over the portcullis at the keep's entrance and follows the wall until it angles left towards the mountains. Beyond them lies the sea, bitter and gray, and across it, her clan. _Mythal'enaste_. They must feel as she does, with their halla gone. The thought brings her little comfort, and she plucks at the string of her bow with restless fingertips.

“Lethallan?”

She does not turn, listening to the dry pad of Arelan's feet on the stones and the gentle clashing of his armor. He stops at her side and watches her for a moment, inquisitive, then follows her line of sight. “Zev's out there,” he says “somewhere. And... the clan. Right?”

Their eyes meet, and she nods. A moment passes; she knows from the way the light catches in his eyes that he understands, from the little turn at the corner of his mouth that he feels it as much as she does. Bracing himself with one arm, he swings his legs over the parapet and sits, his feet dangling over the edge. A faraway look settles in his eyes for a moment, but it's gone by the time he glances back at her, an easy smile on his lips.

Lyna rests her hand on his shoulder; she can feel his joints and wiry muscles shifting with each breath and his heart beating quickly, determinedly, as if he is the only other living thing under this too-still sky. He looks away, grinning. She pinches her bowstring between her thumb and forefinger for a moment before pulling it free and slinging the unstrung bow over her shoulder.

In the distance, a breeze snatches a few dead leaves and drags them, twirling, out of sight. The cord holds firm, but so does she.


End file.
